Locating a broken, but still-beating heart within metallic machine music, East India Youth's debut is a triumph. [Feb 2014, p.97]

Smith's usual meditative, ambient-leaning approach is dialled back in favour of soaring wonky pop, ornate neoclasical and even quasi dancefloor movements. It gives rise to her most joyous music yet. [Oct 2022, p.87]

Some artists, such as Beck and Khruangbin with their art-funk overhauls of Fund My Way and Pretty Boys respectively, build traditional, if inventive remixes around Macca's vocals. Other go further and basically cover the songs. [Aug 2021, p.83]

The odd over ethereal moment notwithstanding, the remainder of the album proves equally alluring. [Jan 2013, p.90]

A massive step away from his band's sound and more towards that of his friend and touring partner Nathaniel Rateliff. No one could dismiss Mumford as a lightweight folk tourist after this. [Nov 2022, p.86]

It is Mastodon's ability to blend such grandstanding flourishes with a powerful sense of songcraft that suggests Crack The Skye might be some "Master Of Puppets" breakthrough for the Atlanta quartet. [May 2009, p.98]

It's as complete as any Floyd completist could hope for. [Apr 2012, p.101]

Fits is sublime, sexy, unmisable. [Jul 2009, p.99]

Altogether Stranger is a significant upgrade and these dystopian but hopeful, image-drenched songs are surely the way ahead for an artist who's becoming special. [Jun 2025, p.82]

The centrifugal force is Rosali's calm, deep voice, belying her lyric's nervous energy and drama, balancing vulnerability with resilience. [May 2024, p.88]

Melt!, a twisted dancefloor lament for the polar ice caps, is a reminder of Owen's ability to mine techno gold. But the highlight is Corner Of My Sky, a memorable collaboration with compatriot John Cale. [Jun 2020, p.91]

Musically simpler and less baroque than The Graceless Age, the album's autobiographical arc is conversely harder to glean, its lyrics more oblique. Murry's greatest ability, however, is to make the listener wince uncomfortably while peeking through their fingers at his captivating, compulsive honesty. [Aug 2017, p.88]

The lack of solidity can make Mercy nebulous like any spirit photo, it sometimes takes work to find the shape, fill in detail. Yet slowly, its unfamiliarity coalesces into a cold beauty, memory acting as a spur, not a comfort blanket. [Feb 2023, p.85]

This album engages out minds while it explores, but as it raises questions, it still comforts. [Sep 2019, p.92]

The S.L.P. might be a one-off, but right here, right now, he sounds liberated. [Oct 2019, p.85]

Uplifting, exuberant gloom. Tremendous. [Oct 2001, p.108]

The insistent, even patient, rhythms that propel most songs on Wolf Parade's fourth album are some measure of hope. They suggest there's someplace the synth-rock band is trying to get, and that there is some place worth reaching. [Nov 2017, p.96]

The resulting 12 songs return the group to their earlier sound, a chaotic bundle of charm and romance, realism and poppy experiment. [Dec 2020, p.83]

A pair of Bartz originals are frenetically reworked, while the veteran's scything sax on new Harlem To Haarlem steals the show. [Jul 2020, p.88]

They ensure Deerhunter's most accessible songs yet are also their most affecting. [Nov 2015, p.86]

Troubadour delivers deeply rewarding pop from its stylistic risks eerily familiar at moments, but ever its own marvellous thing. [Oct 2013, p.96]

It's hard world for little things, pigeon or human: these songs fight to ease the way. [Jul 2023, p.88]

The Only Ones reassures concerned fans that all is very well in Camp Milk Carton. [Jan 2020, p.90]

Recorded in a single night, this light-touch meld of jazz, ambient, post-rock and hip-hop sensibilities find its players intertwined like tangled wires. [Jan 2025, p.82]

The result is one of her most wide-ranging and satisfying collections. [Nov 2014, p.93]

While there are hints at the bleak vibrations that defined his previous solo work, the John Squire-ish groove of The End and beatific title track stand out as stunning comebacks from this folk euphoria original. [Feb 2019, p.90]

Sleigh Bells offer a thrilling ride. [Sep 2010, p.104]

Baby 81 finds a band evolving past expectations into a newly intriguing proposition. [Jun 2007, p.101]

The warmth of the recording and the excellence of the singer and the songs, this is up there with Massey Hall - just five songs shorter. [May 2021, p.96]

Songs fall into two categories: those tracking matters of the heart--Don't You Know could be a forgotten Delfonics single with drummer Aaron Frazer's sweet falsetto taking the lead--and those scolding their home country. These are jolting, especially opener Morning In America, with its Curtis Mayfield and Gil Scott-Heron touches. [Mar 2019, p.96]

Alternate/Endings is sprawling, cinematic and agenda setting. [Feb 2014, p.97]

Lyrically she still falling in love, but the slow burn of Consequences reveals more nuance with each sitting. [Aug 2021, p.83]

Modern Kosmology is every bit as good as its predecessor. [Jun 2017, p.90]

[A] dazzling folk-pop crush. [Mar 2014, p.94]

Aside from Jump Out's nightmare car ride ("Cell phone's dead, neighborhood is dark/what's the plan now?"), even the occasional rockers aim for atmosphere rather than combustion, yet Furman's trademark anger and angst find a way through. [Jun 2025, p.85]

So that's Obits: rapid tunes, powerhouse performances, great album. [May 2009, p.104]

It's far from a one-dimensional experience though, thanks to Mehldau's jaw-dropping virtuosity. [Feb 2011, p.107]

Her's a downhome collection that's low on dBs but as impactful as anything he's done. [May 2011, p.105]

Love In Constant Spectacle is watchful rather than showy, its songs not boxing up one simple mood at a time but sitting with their uncertainty. Nuance might be going out of fashion in the world outside, but in here, Weaver speaks it fluently. [May 2024, p.83]

The narrative lines are fractured, the satire removed; these songs play out like stress responses, fight-or-flight impulses, each one a little panic room. ... There’s not a lot of feeling OK on CACTI, but for once, it feels like exactly the right place for Billy Nomates. She’s brought herself, entirely. [Feb 2023, p.86]

McFarlane inhabits her songbook, eking out fresh meanings and truths. Unashamedly old-school backing from a core quartet of Giacomo Smith (sax), Joe Webb (piano), Ferg Ireland (bass) and Jas Kayser (drums) plays to her storytelling gifts. [Aug 2024, p.84]

[An] expansive advance on their Indian classical-inspired sound. [Aug 2013, p.98]

Holmes's genius is to create a space in which these records are not only at home, but where they shine. [Apr 2002, p.128]

By and large, as per its title, Yours, Dreamily is a downtempo treat, tailor-made for sundazed summer evening drives with the window down. [Sep 2015, p.87]

Sinewy. ... Lines brings a clear echo of mid-period Pink Floyd to the table. [Mar 2022, p83]

Live drums and guitars give it a feeling of anarchic playfulness. [Aug 2005, p.101]

From the moment she opens her mouth here: her gargley vocal, set to fortissimo, summons dusty trails, rattling trains and late-night boozing. [Jan 2017, p.99]

it's unashamedly full-on, Cro-Magnon stuff, but this chaos is often glorious. [Apr 2020, p.87]

Their studio albums have been moving away from virtuoso instrumentals toward vocal songs, of which this album has some excellent examples. [Dec 2007, p.104]

The musical and emotional ground covered here is remarkable, evidence of an artist who can locate joy inside pain, and whose adventurous, modernist, fearful funk can be movingly expressive. [May 2020, p.88]

Well worth a late discovery. [Feb 2014, p.97]

There are grand arrangements and barbed bon mots in the style of Randy Newman and Harry Nilsson, but what's most striking are the more restrained moments. [Mar 2014, p.94]

Despite playing with pop forms, Set My Heart On Fire Immediately holds Hadreas's experimental shape, his artistic line. ... A slow burner, in every way. [Jun 2020, p.94]

With her flinty guitar growling eloquent melodies and stricken solos, the group rock with a primal sensitivity akin to early Throwing Muses, but it's Powell's voice that's their truly irresistible element. [Nov 2008, p.118]

These four sidelong pieces, buttressed by a trio of percussive friends, are gentle journeys into the great beyond. [Nov 2022, p.87]

It's sleek through and through; vicious when it needs to be, yet overwhelmingly classy. [Jun 2016, p.93]

Richey Edwards has his words set to the best music his bandmates have made since their last album together. [Jun 2009, p.97]

Bowerbirds at their least bucolic, both expanding and focusing on a sound that is as timeless as The Band. [Apr 2012, p. 89]

There's some blurring over 17 tracks, but as a whole piece, Freetown Sound is a record with unusually sharp focus. [Aug 2016, p.90]

In The Court Of... sounds both warmly familiar yet dazzlingly fresh.

Furnaces is an entirely winning proposition due to its high melodic content, making for Harcourt's best record yet. [Sep 2016, p.90]

Deep, rewarding songs, rich in authorly detail, which, not for the first time, position Rateliff, still only 45, as a new Springsteen. [Aug 2024, p.81]

It's too taxing for the less intense of the band's admirers. [Nov 2004, p.127]

Built around minimalist synth sequences that are slow-building and tense, with agitated pin-prick rhythms and pulsing stabs evoking a vastness of space and associated emotional states. [Jan 2022, p.87]

Toure sounds at his best, then, with distorted guitars behind him, brooding on an album of menacing, slow-burn songs reflecting on a rough year in Mali. [Aug 2013, p.96]

This NYC ambient country trio continue to evolve on their fifth LP. [Sep 2024, p.94]

The huge exhilaration of Hawk's previous two albums has largely been replaced by more troubled moods - and more stylistic variety - but bravura lyrics remain. [Sep 2024, p.86]

With Ulrich Schnauss's ambient touches adding extra depth to the mix, it's the sound of a belated coming of age. [Sep 2014, p.96]

A gentle triumph. [Jan 2006, p.130]

Shows just how focused their rock'n'roll attack has become. [May 2006, p.105]

This is, ultimately, music you feel in your body, your gut, your skull, a sensation of constant sonic regeneration and psychoactive power that, like the group's use of grim robes and smoke machines when playing live, survives on its enduring air of mystery. [May 2026, p.82]

It's frequently beautiful psych-pop songs throb with a gentle electronic pulse. [May 2026, p.93]

It’s not all dreamy-headed stuff – Relief, for one, achieves rocky lift-off – but for the most part The Good Kind Tom Doyle sustains a compellingly airy atmosphere throughout. [Jan 2024, p.83]

The 75-year-old's first album in six years is both tough and tender. [Nov 2014, p.93]

This album pop-pops with pleasure, sunshine and subversion. [Feb 2016, p.96]

It's yet another beauty. [Mar 2025, p.93]

It results in an intimate album shuddering in the blast of an icy onslaught of crisp, wintery piano. [Dec 2013, p.87]

Boone delivers these stories like she's divorcing a husband, morose but defiant, while guest Cory Gray's keyboards help turn parochial into widescreen. [Mar 2025, p.90]

Making a little go a long way on a contagious return, up there with commercial peak Cabs circa The Crackdown and Micro-Phonies. [Aug 2022, p.94]

Superabundance is a record to treasure. [Apr 2008, p.104]

Sturdy, rousing, crank-it-up Rock'n'roll that's sometimes more punk, sometimes more country. [Feb 2016, p.93]

Skinner's grown-up musings are more twisty and cryptic than his rascally early work, but no less incisive or well-wrought. Inimitable, humane, flawed, it's good to have him back. [Dec 2023, p.86]

The emphasis on experiment and process means there are fewer newly-excavated compositions - Like Veils Said Lorraine, a For The Roses orphan; the modal guitar reveries Sunshine Raga and Bonderia, the former with tabla and free-form trilling - but no less in the way of surprises. [Dec 2023, p.96]

Brainy music is back--about time. [Feb 2015, p.95]

It's a journey worth taking with him. [Mar 2014, p.95]

The demos here colour in the blanks and the alternative mixes are like watching a favourite movie from a different camera angle. But Against The Odds reminds the listener that there were always two Blondies. [Sep 2022, p.98]

Some of the vocals sound like first takes, which gives them an honesty (maybe a bit too honest on opening track In the Summertime). But from here on, it's just lovely. [Aug 2021, p.82]

Two Sisters is arguably Davachi's finest work to date. [Nov 2022, p.87]

Quietly dazzling. [Nov 2009, p.100]

Circuital sees them negotiating their place in the world with heartening vigour. [July 2011, p. 103]

Invitations rushes of feeling are rich and real. Filthy Friends are a genuine supergroup surprise. [Oct 2017, p.96]

With its poetic allusions to loss and loneliness, will resonate with many who have felt the same. [Dec 2021, p.90]

A gorgeous reverie. [Sep 2001, p.99]

The perfect vehicle for Eitzel's gorgeous, weary voice and wry, savage humour. [June 2002, p.106]

[The album] effortlessly skips across sounds and styles like a human Wurlitzer. [Aug 2013, p.98]

It's sometimes easy to lose sight of the humanity in Randy Newman's songwriting. Some redress is afforded by an album which--as with its 2003 predecessor--sees 67-year-old Newman pare back songs spanning four decades to voice and piano. [Jun 2011, p.92]

An album of rich, intricate grooves that use house and techno merely as a jump-off point. [Jul 2014, p.94]

A tightly coiled album, covering 17 tracks in 45 minutes, Maps leaves much to unpick. [Jul 2023, p.87]